LONDON: Britain’s double Olympic champion Mo Farah has denied ever taking performance-enhancing drugs and said rumours and speculation over his career after the revelation that he missed two drugs tests “are completely false”.

The 32-year-old has been under the spotlight since his coach Alberto Salazar was accused of violating anti-doping rules in a BBC documentary earlier this month. This week Britain’s Daily Mail reported that Farah had missed two out-of-competition doping tests in 2010 and 2011.

At the time, the rules meant that a third missed test within an 18-month period (now reduced to 12) would almost certainly have resulted in a ban that would have probably ruled him out of the London 2012 Olympic Games, where he won gold in the 5,000 and 10,000 metres.

“I have never taken performance-enhancing drugs in my life and I never will,” Farah said in a statement published on his Facebook page on Friday.

“Over the course of my career I have taken hundreds of drugs tests and every single one has been negative.

“I’ve fully explained the only two tests in my career that I have ever missed, which the authorities understood, and there was never any suggestion that these were anything more than simple mistakes.”—Reuters

Published in Dawn, June 20th, 2015

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